Another TVA Spill, In Alabama

Another TVA storage pond has leaked at least some. They said all of these ponds had been inspected last week and were structurally sound. What follows is a blurb on a Huntsville, AL, TV station's web site, and a TVA news release. I might join a survey crew downstream from this in the Tennessee River tomorrow, if the leak is worse than thought.

UPDATED 3:20pm: New Information in TVA Spill in Jackson County

January 9, 2009

WHNT NewsChannel 19 is continuing to track down the latest on a breaking news situation surrounding a TVA spill in Jackson County. A waste pond at a coal-burning power plant in northeast Alabama has stopped leaking after some spilled into a nearby creek. It's the second accident at a Tennessee Valley Authority retaining pond in less than a month. TVA spokesman Gil Francis said he didn't know the size of the spill at Widows Creek Fossil Plant on Friday.

TVA officials blamed a leaky pipe. Most of the discharge flowed into another pond but some entered Widows Creek. Francis said the leak isn't toxic. (See Official Press Release Below)

The pond contains gypsum, which is captured in the plant's air pollution control devices and is used in items like wallboard and concrete. The spill, about 30 miles southwest of Chattanooga, Tennessee, follows a December 22 dike burst at a Tennessee plant that dumped 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

TVA FACT SHEET LEAK AT WIDOWS CREEK GYPSUM CONTAINMENTJanuary 9, 2009

TVA is investigating a leak from the gypsum pond at Widows Creek Fossil Plant in Stevenson, Alabama, that was discovered before 6 a.m. on Friday, January 9. The leak has stopped.

The leak from the gypsum pond flowed into an adjacent settling pond. Some material overflowed into Widows Creek, although most of the leakage remained in the settling pond.

TVA has notified appropriate federal and state authorities. TVA will perform temporary repairs to the pond. Gypsum ponds hold limestone spray from TVA's scrubbers that clean sulfur dioxide (SO2) from coal-plant emissions. Gypsum contains calcium sulfate, which is commonly used in drywall, a commercially sold construction material.

I don't know, I've always seen pollution as a cost. A cost of running a productive economy, a cost of manufacturing computers and network components and everything else that makes the world go round. Unfortunate, sure, but so is death and cellulite.

Depending on how you define pollution Ben, you're right. People at the very minimum must consume food and water and produce a nearly equal amount of liquid and solid waste. In Illinois we once had Bluehead Shiners, that is until a little spill killed every single one. Bluehead shiners have not been found since the spill. One man's cost of having a computer can be another man's statewide extirpation.

I realize that I'm as whooped up about these spills as I am because the Tennessee River is my drinking water in Huntsville. I am, of course, at the mercy of the TVA and other corporations that are beyond easy influence and effective regulation much of the time. The current forms of generating large amounts of energy for a central grid all have serious drawbacks in terms of handling and storing some sort of waste. This storage is designed and managed by humans, so you know there will be failures along the way. Fly ash in your drinking water might not be as bad as, say, radioisotopes of iodine or cesium, but it's still bad enough. And that's not even dealing with issues like extirpations and extinctions, which I assume are a primary interest of Forum participants. It's like the man said; Earth First!, then we can go screw up other planets.

Man is a force of nature, too. I don't think anyone thinks that it's government or corporate policy to rampage through virgin forests and streams, leaving a trail of nitrate laden streams, dessicated salamanders, and slag heaps in their wake. I mean, TVA isn't actively trying to put coal leavings in streams, after all, but it happens... in a virgin wilderness unsullied by man, a stream could likewise be contaminated by, say, a forest catching fire and the carboniferous leavings being washed into it.

Well, see, TVA could have put that waste in a lined landfill, as folks have been urging them to do for years. But they didn't. This was not an unanticipated event; this sort of thing has happened before.

You're right that we cannot eliminate our impact on the environment, but we certainly should do what we can to minimize it, for our own sakes as well as the sakes of our fellow organisms.

Oh, I don't deny that we should try to minimize our impact. But I think that there should be a cost-benefit analysis involved, and it should be rational. I remember reading about a particular federal regulation involving wood preservatives that had a cost of something like $600 billion per life saved. I don't know about the costs involved in the particular TVA measures you're talking about, I'm just speaking in generalities here. Nature is resilient, after all.

It's possible that I have a somewhat colored view of the issue because Texas waterways couldn't be much farther from their natural state.

I know what you mean about cost benefit analysis Ben. I think we've all seen money tossed at a lost cause while something simple, cheap and effective was sitting right under someones nose. I have also seen great work by dedicated people on a shoestring budget and personal unpaid time. Spills bug me especially when preventative measures are recommended but not enacted.

I know what you mean about cost benefit analysis Ben. I think we've all seen money tossed at a lost cause while something simple, cheap and effective was sitting right under someones nose. I have also seen great work by dedicated people on a shoestring budget and personal unpaid time. Spills bug me especially when preventative measures are recommended but not enacted.

I think the expansion of private property would go a long way, if we were strictly interested in conservation. The government is not a great steward of unspoiled land due to perverse incentives (grazing rights, timber rights, etc.). Instead of enforcing environmental standards by agency rule, we could enforce environmental standards by tort.

Instead of enforcing environmental standards by agency rule, we could enforce environmental standards by tort.

...since that worked so well for us all prior to the Clean Air and Clean Water acts?

I don't like more government, especially when something needs done. I've run into curmudgeons all over the place, who'll overlook science and documentation for political or apathetic reasons, and require pages of forms and reports to document and speak for the voiceless, and it's madenning. But the alternative seems worse. No one but the government has the money to prove tortious claims with these companies. So I'm not sure how that's going to work out for us all. I'd be GLAD to hear suggestions

This area isn't really in a natural state either, but there are areas upstream that face similar types of sequestered materials that would be devestating to relict communities that are the last of their kind. Having three "meltdowns" in one week doesn't speak well for the designs of the retention or best practices for repairs. Coal and hydroelectric may keep the lights on, but they sure don't seem like sustainable answers, the byproducts accumulating and then spilling (think of the aquatic degredation of just shipping coal, the stream homogenization, without even spilling or daming anything!) .

There are rooftops on every building we're sitting in, baking in the sun when we need electricity the most for air conditioning... That's one place to start a change. While a decentralized grid would cost profits for companies, I don't understand why 99.9% of the population needs to suck it up for the other 0.1%'s apathetic attitude toward moving their industries into a long term goal other than "make money" when their company charter was "utility".

FWIW our man Neely has been on the scene... This isn't environmental "degredation". Rather, it's environmental obliteration. He was describing 10 ft "ashbergs" calving off the face of the plume, the inability to find native substrates with an eckman sampler in the Emory, and cm's of ash out at the junction of the Clinch and the Tennessee. He's too "pissed to post thoughtfully" so I thought I'd throw in an update. It's bad, folks.

Decentralized energy generation doesn't fit with current usage patterns. Non-steady state sources don't make sense right now. Additionally, they're too expensive. I've talked with my father about this at great length, because he's wanted to add solar and wind generation capacity to his animal hospital for years, but even with current subsidies those types of distributed generation aren't practical or economically feasible. So, two things can happen: 1) conventional generation can start costing more, and the breakeven point moves down, making alternative generation more practical, or 2) advances in technology make distributed generation (and hopefully) storage competitive with conventional sources. But the way things stand right now, it's a non-starter.

I'm not even entirely convinced that the laws of physics allow non-conventional power generation in a scalable way to our current needs.

This area isn't really in a natural state either, but there are areas upstream that face similar types of sequestered materials that would be devestating to relict communities that are the last of their kind. Having three "meltdowns" in one week doesn't speak well for the designs of the retention or best practices for repairs. Coal and hydroelectric may keep the lights on, but they sure don't seem like sustainable answers, the byproducts accumulating and then spilling (think of the aquatic degredation of just shipping coal, the stream homogenization, without even spilling or daming anything!) . Todd

I think that, especially the first sentance is the most important biological thing about this situation. Some of the knee jerk reactions I've seen so far have been almost comical. The second Clinch + Ash spill were combined everyone went into a panic mode. A little further reading, maybe a simple internet search or two, would have clearly answered that the spill took place 100+ river miles from the biodiversity hotspots. Those areas have faced spills in the past and face them in the future unfortunately. The Emory is thankfully almost fully forested and on federal or state land, yet had a small chemical spill within the last decade. But back to the first part of Todd's quote above; this area isn't in a natural state. Historic and legacy effects of coal mining, nearly 100 years of impoundment, and over 50 years of radioactivity. The faunal diversity in this area (impounded confluences of Emory and Clinch) was comparitively poor in this area before the coal plant and the spill. It's not an excuse by any stretch of the imagination, it's just the proper context.

Of course we should be thankful that this didn't hit the upper Clinch, but that doesn't mean diddly to the folks downstream who get their water supply from the river, or who recreationally fish or swim in the river.

Here's some context for you. More when we get the chem results back...

I perfectly understand the concern for recreation, fishing, and most importantly potable water supplies. It is a life source for a tremendous amount of people and I too would wonder about the short term and long term safety of the supply. This is going to leave an environmental legacy in terms of centuries not decades. There were portions of that river I wouldn't step in regardless of such an event. I'm personally having to question the safety of my own water supply because of improper storage of fly ash in Anne Arundel County. I'm just shocked by some of overblown reaction I've seen. I wouldn't be caught dead saying some of those things on the internet, especially when my email ends with .gov. It's a great way to have that thrown in your face by a lawyer 10 years down the road when you're trying to give expert testimony. They've been unsubtantiated, irrational, and down right incorrect.

I think I missed something, whose email ends in ".gov"? The spill in Alabama was mercifully plugged before it got too bad so I'm back to just thinking snarky things about TVA for that one. But the Emory spill looks worse than I'd imagined, especially thinking about the amounts of arsenic and metals that are now mobilized into the Tennessee system. I look forward (!) to any chem reports.